


Slipping Off the Map

by Las



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Apocalypse, Episode: s04e17 It's a Terrible Life, Episode: s05e04 The End, Gen, Supernatural Summergen Fic Exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-19
Updated: 2011-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-23 21:17:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Las/pseuds/Las
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the events of 2014!5x04 and Sandover!4x17. "It's no one's world, man. There is no world. It ended, or did you miss that memo?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slipping Off the Map

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaimeykay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaimeykay/gifts).



> Thank you to Maerhys for fielding my questions, and to Chibifrieza for betareading.

"When I say run—" Cas whispers. "When I say run, you run. Understand?"

It's eighty degrees in the shade, the summer settling into the bones of the earth. Dean can hear the buzz of cicadas, the hush of incoming croats. He smells gunpowder. He smells blood.

"Dean," Cas hisses.

"I get it, I get it."

Their jeep is around the corner of the building. He can see it right there and it's so far away, all those croats in the way, an army of them, and it's just him and Cas against the world. What a fucked up world. Dean presses up against the wall, his heart doing ninety, Cas beside him and clutching his shoulder. Maybe it's reassurance but maybe – and Dean thinks this is the more likely scenario – it's just fear.

Cas says, "Ready?"

Dean nods.

A bead of sweat trickles down his cheek. Summers in the south always burn Dean right up. A memory intrudes on his thoughts, disorientingly gentle: family vacations in Virginia and racing his sister down country roads.

"Run."

-

Dean's not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth, and not especially when the horses are in short supply, but this one little thing is driving him nuts. Back at Sandover, he had made it a point to remember even the trainees' names. He knew how many kids the guy who sold him his morning coffee had (three). He knew the names of his neighbor's cats (Pippin and Hook), and he knew that Ronald the doorman was two years away from retirement. He was going to go back to the islands because the northern winters were hell on his lungs.

Dean can't remember Cas at all.

"You didn't work at Sandover," Dean said as Cas worked the needle and thread. This was not long after they first met.

"No," Cas confirmed, which Dean could've guessed. Cas didn't seem like the Sandover type, but put anyone through the croatpocalypse for a few years and they won't look like any type but mean and malnourished.

College was his next guess. Frat brother? Classmate? T.A.? Lacrosse nemesis?

Cas frowned. "What _is_ lacrosse?"

"Is Cas short for something? Like, uh, Cassidy? I knew a guy from Germany called Caspar."

"Just Cas," he said quietly.

"My sister, right?" Dean snapped his fingers triumphantly, as if confidence would make it true. "I knew it. You're Jo's friend." Jo had weird friends; it would make sense.

He corrected himself: Jo _has_ weird friends.

Again, Cas said no.

"Come on, man. You gotta help me out here."

"I'm trying to," he said, and Dean chose to ignore the peevishness in his voice.

Cas seemed like he knew his way around first-aid, but that didn't mean he was gentle in the application of it. There were no doctors anymore, only medics in trenches. No clinics, just pulling over to the side of the road once they were sure they weren't being chased anymore. Cas was shaking but every "take it easy" got hushed and every "are you okay" got shut down. He refused to be comforted. Cas stitched Dean up with unsteady slippery fingers and it hurt, so Dean rambled to distract himself.

"I mean," Dean said, grinning through the pain, "you obviously know me. You knew my name."

Cas glanced up at him then back down at his arm, a quick little movement that could've been irritated dismissal if it weren't for the tone of his reply. "I was mistaken."

-

Dean reaches the jeep first and doesn't even know how he did it, fuck. He dives for the driver's seat and Cas yells, "Go! _Go!_ " Dean turns on the ignition and then it's pedal to the metal, let's get the hell out of Dodge. He mows down three croats and doesn't stop. Dean glances at the rearview mirror. The jeep bounces on rough terrain, making Cas's reflection jump as if from snapshot to snapshot: a gun, wild eyes, shirt all stained with dirt and dried blood.

"We should go faster," Cas wheezes.

"Where the hell are we gonna go?" Dean demands against the wind, and nearly has a heart attack when a gun goes off. "Jesus!"

Cas reloads and aims at the horde. "Go faster."

-

"Okay, I got it. We met at that new media seminar in Hartford."

"No."

-

"It's like _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_ ," Jo said over the phone the last time they talked. "They want you to join up. They're stronger than normal people and they work together. It's fucked up. You saw that YouTube video going around, right?"

Dean leaned against his kitchen counter and talked around a mouthful of toast. "Come on, the cops said those people were high on PCP or something."

" _You_ come on. It wasn't PCP."

It was late Sunday morning and the smell of coffee began to permeate his apartment. He was slightly hungover. Everything got filtered through the soft focus of morning-afters, half of him still flicking through last night's better escapades, the other half wondering if it was worth the time and effort to make an omelette.

"You know they have a vaccine for it now, right?" Dean said, because that was what the news said when he turned it on an hour ago.

"Yeah, but this is like, what, the third vaccine they've tried? Look, all I'm saying's be careful. I have a journalist friend over in Houston and she says they're gonna quarantine the whole downtown area."

"I'm nowhere near Houston."

Jo was half a continent away and knee-deep in personal missions, and Dean shrugged it off as usual, focusing instead on the tone of her voice. Her determination was familiar and her irritation comforting. He used to wish she lived closer so he could keep an eye on her, but really, she has always been able to bend him to play the games he was supposed to protect her from. In the end she took better care of herself than she ever gave him license to.

She must still be out there. She must definitely still be alive.

"So that's what you're doing?" Cas asked. This was the first night of what was to become their tentative alliance, passing a flask of moonshine back and forth as they sat in the jeep, guns in hand. "You're trying to find your sister?"

"Well, yeah. Don't look so mystified, man. I mean... I have to make sure my family's okay."

"Right. Of course." In the dark, Dean couldn't see Cas's expression, but his silhouette shook with silent laughter. "No, that makes sense."

Dean frowned. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing."

Weirdo.

"What about you?" Dean asked.

Cas snorted. "What about me?"

"What about your family?"

There was a thoughtful pause. Then, "Fuck 'em," he said. "They're dicks."

-

They're going to have to abandon this jeep.

The thought makes Dean queasy because this jeep is fast and it can run croats over, and those are reasons enough for him to propose marriage to the thing, but soon this baby's going to run out of gas and the world is running out of gas stations. Soon they're going to have to continue on foot, and this fills him with crippling dread. How he survived before before Cas and his jeep came along, he isn't sure. He's reminded of that story about a barefoot beggar and the well-meaning samaritan who bought him shoes. When the shoes wore out in a year, the beggar had lost the calluses on his feet, and upon having to walk the streets barefoot again, they got cut up and infected. Then he died of tetanus or something. God, who told him that story? It must've been Jo.

He keeps one eye on the gas meter.

When he realizes Cas hasn't made a peep in a while, he says, "You okay back there?" He looks at the rearview mirror.

Shit.

The apocalypse is a harbinger of strange luck at high costs. You're alone at the end of days? Here, have a buddy who knows stuff about killing shit! He'll save your ass from croats. Also he is a junkie going through withdrawal. Enjoy!

The first time he saw Cas get the shakes, Dean thought he was turning and tied him to a tree, then watched him from a safe distance with a gun.

"Cas?" Dean says. "Hey, Cas, talk to me."

"Keep driving."

"You okay?"

Cas looks like utter shit, all flushed and trembling, hair sweat-damp. He curls up in the backseat like he's trying to take up as little space as possible, face in his hands like he's trying to block out the world. Dean begins to pull up to the side of the road but there's a violent kick to the back of his seat and Cas makes a hoarse animal sound.

"Son of a—!" Dean yells.

"Keep _driving_!" Cas rasps.

"All right, all right! Fuck."

But he decreases speed and keeps checking the mirror. "I'm mostly over it," Cas had said after that first episode (after he was done giving Dean the silent treatment), and Dean replied, "Don't these things take a long time?" And Cas just laughed a harsh bitter laugh. Cas, the king of inappropriate reactions.

"I'm fine," Cas slurs, unasked, muffled behind his hands. "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm..."

"If you're gonna puke again, you puke out the jeep."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you, this is the only jeep we have!" But Dean's hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel and he can't stop looking at the rearview mirror.

Dean's gotten used to this. Not that it gets easier. He gets used to being afraid. He gets used to Cas falling into panic attacks, shaking, throwing up, speaking in tongues, and that last one is weird, man, what the hell. Dean asked him once what language it was and Cas said it's not any human language, so Dean decided not to pursue it any further because whatever. Weirdo. He doesn't want to know what Cas meant when he clung to him that one time and accusingly hissed, "You were dead, you were dead."

He has held Cas in his arms while Cas rambled, "I can't do this," and Dean said, "Yes, you can, you got through this before, you big baby, it'll be over soon," but Cas just shook his head and said no and made a sound like laughter though it didn't look like it.

He clarified, "I can't do this if you keep coming back."

-

So yeah, one time, Dean tied Cas to a tree and ignored the yelling about how it was just the drugs, it was the lack of drugs, let him go, he wasn't turning, he wasn't a croat, it was just withdrawal and he was still him. "I'm not a croat," Cas pleaded, and Dean said, "Yeah, well, croats lie."

"Then why don't you just _shoot me_!" Cas screamed. "Fucking shoot me like you shoot all the others, _fuck you_ , you wanted me to die—"

Dean had yelled back at first, but then figured there was no use getting into a screaming match with a crazy person, so he just sat there and waited for whatever conclusion would befall them. Cas strained against his bonds as Dean sat cross-legged a good fifteen feet away, poker-faced and heart pounding, shotgun on his lap. The sun beat down on them, bright and relentless. At least, he thought detachedly, Cas was in the shade.

"But it's okay," Cas slurred, when he got too tired for yelling, too far deep in delirium tremens, "because we're just footnotes. Means, not ends. Side effects. Analogy."

Dean thought to himself, _I should just get up and leave him here._

"It's like you said, it's Zachariah," Cas babbled. "He doesn't put his toys away."

_Am I ready to wish I were the kind of man who leaves people to die?_

It takes three hours for someone to completely turn, and Dean spent those hours going through hypotheticals. Even if Cas didn't turn out to be a croat, what if Dean woke up in the night with Cas pointing a gun at his head? What if Cas bugged out in the middle of a croat ambush? What if Cas this, what if they that? Dean watched him struggle against the ropes, watched him throw his head back against the trunk with sickening thuds. Those ropes weren't going to give any time soon. Dean was an Eagle Scout (remembers his mom taking endless pictures at the ceremony), and he is good with knots.

"You're just gonna give yourself a concussion doing that," Dean said, trying to sound jaunty the way movie stars do, but mostly he felt like Keanu Reeves from that scene in _Johnny Mnemonic_. He just wanted some fucking room service.

"What if," Cas continued, "we've outlived our purpose?"

Dean wanted those crunchy fried plantain things from Trader Joe's and _Lost_ on OnDemand and a full-body massage and he wanted to sleep for a thousand years. He missed his laptop and his ergonomic office chair where he'd steal forty winks between conference calls, and he missed his mom's soup and his sister calling him names and his dad undercooking the burgers. He missed his Blackberry, which he threw at a croat in an attempt at self-defense, not that it worked.

"We're going to have to see this story through to the end," Cas declared, eyes lucid with madness. "If it ends. How deep does the rabbit hole go?" He grinned. "It's why I wasn't afraid to die, you know. I knew you meant for us to die. I _knew_ , you fucking bastard, I figured it out, I didn't care, I was fucking _relieved_."

"I don't want anyone to die," Dean said.

Cas laughed. "Any you but the one I had. Of course." He laughed again or maybe sobbed. "Of course."

And then there were the times when Cas just sat there, shaking, wordless but not silent, moaning quietly to himself. There were the times when all Cas could say was his name, Dean Dean Dean over and over again until it sounded foreign to him, until it didn't sound like his name at all.

-

Dean says, "Fuck this."

He pulls over, and this time Cas is too far gone to protest.

"Cas, you with me?" Dean asks as he climbs into the backseat and reaches over the back to sift through their supplies.

"Don't," Cas mutters, and it is answer enough.

The blankets are currently a pillow for their flashlights and packets of batteries, and Dean grabs a corner and ignores the clatter as he pulls. There are three. One looks like what he imagines a regulation army blanket would look like. The other is blue and has little Yogi Bears all over it. The last one is actually a quilt that Dean looted from a house they squatted in a couple of weeks ago. It was warm and soft and, best of all, it smelled of nothing worse than dust and mothballs. He wraps these now around Cas, who protests and curses, but ultimately surrenders himself: to warmth, to the feeling of being enveloped, to Dean. He gives in. Maybe he's too weak to do anything but.

"You're gonna drink some water, okay?" Dean unscrews the top of their canteen and holds it up to Cas's mouth. "Cas—" Cas sips and spits it out. "Stop. Cas. Sit up. Drink the water."

"I don't—"

"Cas, drink the goddamn water."

But this whole situation is only making Cas more anxious and Dean can tell. Too bad. He pesters Cas with the water until he sits up and gulps down a few mouthfuls, and now Cas is aggravated enough that the trembling worsens and he's started the speaking-in-tongues thing again, which always sets Dean on edge. Cas lists ever so slightly towards him, so Dean gingerly puts an arm around him and says, "Hey," because he doesn't know what else to say.

"I'm sorry," Cas slurs.

"It's okay," Dean says, and hopes he doesn't get puked on again this time.

"Dean."

"What?"

"Dean—"

" _What?_ "

"I let your brother out of the panic room."

"You... The what?"

Cas's voice cracks. "I'm sorry."

"Cas, I don't have a brother."

"I'm sorry."

"Cas." And what can he do? He shifts to hold Cas closer to him and, after a few seconds' hesitation, tries a gruff and awkward, "It's okay."

Cas just laughs.

-

Dean takes one step closer to the cliff edge and suddenly the ground gives way, and he wakes up from his nightmare with a twitch and a gasp.

It was still morning when they escaped from those croats, but now the sun hangs low in the sky and the air has the viscous quality of late afternoons. Dean's limbs are stiff and his skin is damp with sweat, but the nightmare is already receding and he feels gently and inexorably alive. To his right, the highway is lined with trees, thick and verdant with summer. To his left, farmland has become windblown grassland, and beyond that, the land shrugs up into sun-drenched hills. He thinks he should be angry that he let his guard down for so long, but it is so quiet and peaceful now that Dean feels nothing but reprieve.

Miracle of miracles, Cas is asleep. He's curled up with his head on Dean's lap, snoring softly, and for a moment Dean is thrown off-balance by the unfamiliarity of the sight. Cas rarely sleeps. Sleeping is something they do in shifts, but even when it's Dean's turn to keep watch, Cas usually stays up with him, spinning yarns about people he knew, places he went to, and his time in the army. ("Where'd you serve?" Dean asked suspiciously once because some of Cas's stories are fucking outlandish, and Cas replied, "Everywhere.") Most times, though, they'd say nothing, finding it easier to watch the darkness than to dig into the past. Dean got used to this companionable silence, Cas beside him with his hands trying not to shake, his habit of raising his head and frowning as if straining to hear some distant music.

"Hey," Dean murmurs, and bounces his knee. "Cas."

Cas says something like "fdlksfjs" and only shrinks further into his blanket cocoon.

He lifts Cas's head and scooches out from under it before gently setting him down again. Cas makes a snuffling sound and continues sleeping. Dean climbs into the driver's seat. He turns the key in the ignition and the jeep rumbles to life, and he drives.

-

On either side of the road, it's plains, trees, plains, trees, occasionally interrupted by the wide glass of lakes. Dean can almost pretend it's five years ago and he's just driving cross-country to visit his parents, just a particularly quiet day on the road. The cities and towns show obvious signs of decay, but out where people never made their mark, it's business as usual. The first time he got out of the city and reached the woods, he heard birdsong in the morning. It shocked him. He stood rooted to the spot for god knows how long, just listening. (Jo would know the names of these birds. She'd be able to imitate their calls.)

Cas wakes up soon enough. He never does sleep for very long.

"How you doing?" Dean asks.

"Like shit," Cas mutters, rubbing his eyes. "You want me to drive?"

"And let you drive us off the road? No thanks."

They fall into the desultory ebb and flow of small talk, the exchange of memories both significant and mundane. Movies they've watched, or Dean has watched, since Cas hasn't watched very many. Books they've read, then. ("Best poet I ever knew was a seamstress in Tokyo in the 1920s," Cas says. "Wrote them on the back of order invoices and never let anyone else see them.") The summer Dean drove cross-country with Jo and spent most of it battling over the radio. The time Cas spent an hour debating with a monk in Kathmandu on whether God is something we ever need to look for. Dean tells him about eating burgers with his family in a little seaside shack in Delaware, and Cas tells him about the time his friend took him to a whorehouse to lose his virginity.

"Hope you got yourself tested afterward," Dean smirks.

Cas chuckles. "Yeah. No. It didn't really work out."

And then, because crazier things have come out of Cas's mouth, Dean starts telling him about the ghosts. Old man Sandover, the Ghostfacers website, the iron and salt, the whole shebang. The few hunts he managed to check out after he resigned from Sandover, before the world went to hell. Cas is attentive and full of questions, and Dean doesn't know whether he should be surprised or not that Cas just takes it all in a stride. What gun did Dean use? Did he seal the salt rounds properly?

"Sounds like you a know a little bit about ghostbusting, Cas."

"A little bit," because apparently Cas really has been everywhere and done everything.

"What happened to Sam?" Cas asks.

"I don't know. He stayed at Sandover."

"He didn't come with you?"

"Why would he?"

"Why wouldn't he?"

Dean frowned. "I dunno, man, he was kind of a freak."

"He sounded like a good guy," Cas says hesitantly.

"Why are you so concerned with Sam anyway?" Dean snaps, aware he sounds more defensive than he needs to be.

Truth be told, he has left Sam Wesson unexamined in his mind for various reasons he has never articulated to himself. There was something about the guy. Dean had the feeling that if he dug too deep in that direction, he wouldn't like what he'd find. Sam Wesson. Those last days at Sandover stuck out in his mind, and not just because of the ghost and the discovery of the supernatural, but also because of Sam's utter conviction that the world was wrong. That he was right. That _they_ were right. Those moments where Sam looked into his eyes and triggered something surprisingly vulnerable and painful inside him, something that almost had Dean saying yes, yes I trust you, yes let's go, right now, just you and me. It's not something Dean lets himself dwell on. For one thing, it's crazy. For another, he doesn't like lingering on missed opportunities.

He hopes Sam is okay.

"Do you think he's still out there?" Cas asks. "Do you think Sam's still alive?"

"How the hell should I know?"

"You didn't keep in touch with him?"

"Oh, yeah, I called him all the time after the lines went down."

"Maybe we should find him."

"What is your obsession with this guy?" Dean snaps. "Look, he was some guy who worked in IT, we busted a ghost together, that's it. Maybe he's out there, maybe he's not, maybe he's a croat. Not my problem." He ignores the ache in his chest and the little scratchy voice saying _wrong wrong wrong_.

Dean swallows. "I just want to find my family."

"Right," Cas says softly. "Of course you do."

-

" _Dean!_ "

The world jerked sideways. This was how he met Cas.

"Dean, you ass, open your eyes. Dean!"

He opened his eyes.

The daylight blinded him. He immediately closed them again and grumbled in protest, and the voice calling his name made a sob of relief.

"Dean," it said, all messy and broken like it was the one that came back from the dead. "It's okay, they're gone. They're gone. Dean—"

The vague sensation of being propped against something, something soft and warm and shaking, enveloped by an earthquake. Someone's arms around him, someone's mouth breathing words against his temple. "Fuck," it said, "fuck you, I thought you were dead, I thought—" crashing headlong into anger as if struggling to fight another emotion.

"Son of a bitch," Dean croaked.

Laughter wild with relief. "Yeah. Yeah, son of a bitch. That's right."

He opened one eye and then the other, the world swimming into view. Colors shifting into shapes shifting into dead bodies. With some difficulty, he turned his head. Who was this guy?

"My head..." Dean murmured.

"Shut up," said whoever it was. "You'll be okay. We're getting out of here, we'll—Dean, I swear, I'll stop, I mean it this time, I'll stop, it can be like how it was." The voice gone crackly like static interference. "Fuck. We'll—You'll be okay. Dean. No, Dean, open your eyes. Dean—"

-

Back outside of Chattanooga, in the parking lot of what used to be a strip mall, Dean's wild flailings with a knife nearly got them killed. He got a gash across his chest for his troubles, a brief peek into the light at the end of the tunnel, and four gunshots later, Cas was yelling in his face. This was about a week after they met.

"I _really_ didn't want to waste those bullets!" Cas said, and oh, okay, nice, so it was a waste of bullets to save him. Okay then.

"It's nice to know what matters," Dean muttered dazedly.

"It does help to focus," Cas snapped.

And they were both still trembling as they barked at each other, still arguing as Cas helped Dean inside the CVS. Cas liberated a sewing kit and Dean took off his shirt, and god damn it Dean was supposed to know better, and jesus christ Cas could be a little more sympathetic, and Cas said he was going to have to teach Dean how to fight like a winner, and—

Cas looked up from threading the needle and suddenly quieted.

"What?" Dean asked. He followed Cas's line of sight. "What, is there something on my shoulder?"

Cas looked down and swallowed. "No. No, there's nothing on your shoulder. Stay still."

So they spar sometimes. It's a way to keep them on their toes, keep them fit, pass the time. Dean is a natural at it, if he does say so himself. He wonders at what he could've been if not a businessman.

Dean's next punch hits Cas square in the jaw, and when Cas reels back, Dean grabs him and hurls him to the ground, pinning him there, and suddenly there's a knife to Cas's throat, and the both of them are breathing hard, staring wild-eyed at each other, sweaty with exertion and the summer heat.

Cas grins proudly, then Dean does too. He has been winning more and more lately.

"You learn fast," Cas says as Dean stands and offers him a hand up.

"Right?" Dean says, exhilarated. "I don't know, man, it felt like... It felt _good_."

Cas calls for a Coke break. The Coke will warm, but it's still a treat, lifted off an abandoned truck they found at a turnpike a few days back. Abandoned, and who knows for how long. There was a fine coat of dust over everything. Dean wrote a rude message on the windshield with his finger and it made Cas smile. They stripped the truck of anything useful and traded theories on what could have possibly happened to the vehicle's former owners, all of them leading to the same conclusion.

"Put a little smile on, pal," Dean says when Cas comes back with two cans. "You weren't so bad yourself."

Cas tosses him one. "You're too kind."

"I tell you what," Dean says. "When we get this apocalypse shit over and done with and I get my old job back, how about you come work for me? I could use a P.A. with your kill ratio."

"I don't think so."

"When this apocalypse is over and done with," he says, a little louder and high on small victories, "I'm gonna go on that vacation to Fiji. I'm gonna get that summer home in Lake Tahoe. Go to Paris. I got a lot of things on my to-do list, man. What about you? What do you want?"

Cas cracks open his can. "Nothing on earth."

"Don't give me that shit." Dean slaps his shoulder. "Come on. It's the end of the end of the world and you're a hero, they're yelling your names from the bleachers, holy shit it's Cas the croat-killer!" He makes that gusty sound in the back of his throat that's supposed to sound like a stadium cheering. "Cas! Cas! Cas! You got the medal of honor, you're doing the talk show circuit, women throwing themselves at your feet. You can have anything you want—"

"A second chance."

Dean pauses. He licks his lips and looks down. The buzzing of cicadas hangs heavy around them.

"How's, uh... how's that going for you?" Dean asks.

"How's that going for—" Cas looks up at him, something fierce in his eyes, something vastly terrible like all the world has closed in on this one moment, the epicenter of whatever loss Cas has experienced. Cas looks gutted, but dangerous for it. Dean finds himself holding his breath. He finds himself wondering if this is it, if this is finally when Cas is going to snap.

But Cas just snorts and drinks his Coke. "About as well as can be expected."

-

"Do you really think you're going to find your family?" Cas asks.

"What?"

It's already late in the day, the sky smudged with indigo. The only light is the line on the horizon, tinting the undersides of distant clouds a melon shade. Cas is driving as Dean nods off in the passenger seat. His question calls Dean back, chases away an incoming dream about open roads and the taste of blood, some wry and familiar voice teasing him.

"Your family," Cas says. "You really think they're out there."

"Yeah. Yeah, of course they are."

Cas nods. "Okay."

"What?" Dean frowns. "What are you getting at?"

But all Cas says is, "This isn't their world either."

"It's no one's world, man. There is no world. It ended, or did you miss that memo?"

"And yet we're still here."

"That's right." Dean straightens up and rubs his eyes, all hope of sleep gone. "This here's reality."

"A version of it," Cas concedes.

"Hate to break it to you," Dean grumbles, "but it's the only version we got."

Cas chuckles. "I can't tell if that's optimism or pessimism."

"Yeah, well." He meets Cas's eyes in the rearview mirror. "Neither can I."


End file.
